It has been found desirable to periodically remove the wheels from over-the-road trucks and other vehicles so that the wheels may be cleaned, stripped of old paint and rust, and recoated with a paint, powder, or other similar coating. In addition to increasing the life of the wheel by slowing the corrosion process, wheel refinishing results in a wheel that is better able to form a seal with the bead region of a mounted tire to provide a wheel/tire assembly that is less likely to lose air pressure.
For safety, environmental, and manufacturing considerations, the coating of a cleaned wheel is typically performed within a paint booth designed to prevent or inhibit fumes and other contaminants from entering the atmosphere. In present systems, once a wheel is located in the paint booth, the operator uses a hand-held spray gun apparatus to direct paint onto the various portions of the wheel as desired. Although existing systems may include one or more rolling or rotating elements for spinning or rotating a wheel while it is being painted, these prior systems are capable of rotating a wheel only about a single axis. These systems increase the necessary amount of time consuming labor by requiring the paint booth operator to reach into the paint booth with the spray gun, along the sides and behind the wheel being painted to adequately coat the wheel. One prior system requires the operator to transfer the wheel from a first rolling apparatus that rotates a standing wheel in the vertical plane to a second apparatus designed to rotate a wheel laying on its side in the horizontal plane. Also, these prior systems require the paint booth operator to manually move a coated wheel from the paint booth to a drying rack or other storage location. Therefore, these prior systems require a large amount of manual labor on the part of the paint booth operator. Given the weight of these wheels, especially those for use on over-the-road trucks, this manual labor is time consuming and generally slows down the rate at which wheels may be refinished. Also, it has been found that the repetitive motions required of the paint booth operator are very tiring.
The configuration of these prior paint booth systems requires the paint spray gun apparatus to be directed at the wheel from a variety of different angles. This nonuniformity of the spray painting angle, in conjunction with the substantially constant direction of the exhaust flow within the paint booth, makes it difficult to apply an even coat of paint to all wheel surfaces as is required. For example, while painting one portion of a wheel, the operator may be applying paint at an angle crossing the exhaust flow, and while painting a different portion of a wheel, the operator may be applying paint generally in the same direction as the exhaust flow. These different paint application angles result in a non-uniform paint coating being applied to the wheel.